Imposter Syndrome is a fairly recently discovered and named syndrome (Clance and Imes, 1978), but one thing that has become clear since then is that it is mostly highly intelligent people who are affected and that imposters don’t suffer from imposter syndrome. Unfortunately, intelligent people seem to have self-doubt much more often than those who aren’t. If you have ever experienced it you are in good company: Jodie Foster, Sheryl Sandberg, Tom Hanks, Emma Watson and Robbie Williams have all experienced it, as well as a host of academic high achievers.
So, what is it like to suffer from imposter syndrome? I have personally experienced imposter syndrome when I started winning prizes and awards for digitally created work I did with my students in high school. The first few times I or my students won an award I was convinced that we had just been lucky. This is a typical reaction. After all, creative people are among the first to explore new domains, in my case, there were simply not enough teachers doing the kind of “experiments” I was doing (creating videos, wikis, and multimedia projects with my students). There was simply not a lot of competition (true) and therefore I was among the lucky winners. Except, that wasn’t the whole story. 10 years later and the majority of teachers still aren’t doing the kind of “experiments” I was doing, even though the tools for doing so have become progressively more simple to use.
At the time, however, I wasn’t aware of that, of course. I started to have self-doubts and told myself that these achievements were nothing to pride myself for. I must be running out of ideas (no, I wasn’t the ideas kept coming) and I finally came to the conclusion I must be a fraudster. The other teachers weren’t doing the kinds of things I was doing because the kids were clearly learning less. I was just playing instead of teaching and the other teachers were aware of that. What I was doing was not even legitimate. It took me some time to understand that most of the other teachers just weren’t aware of all the possibilities of digital media in the classroom for the simple reason that they never felt a need or desire to use them.
So, what makes people susceptible to imposter syndrome? The Dunning-Kruger effect can help explain this phenomenon. These two scientists found out that less competent people tend to overestimate their skills, whereas more competent tend to underestimate their skills up to a certain degree when it becomes really hard not to understand that one is far advanced compared to the majority of people.
The takeaway, people with moderately high intelligence are actually the ones most likely to underestimate themselves. For imposter syndrome to occur two personality traits must be present: high openness to new ideas and humility. I have argued before that in human evolution our ancestral environment:
hunter-gatherer
|
farmer-herder
|
High on personality trait “openness”, (often) low on “conscientiousness”
|
High on personality trait “conscientiousness”, low on “openness”
|
Strongly (actively) egalitarian, more modest
|
Status-seeking, less modest
|
More sensitive to criticism (ostracism)
|
less sensitive to criticism (ostracism)
|
The table shows that hunter-gatherer minds should be more susceptible to imposter syndrome than farmer-herder minds. In fact, humility is a highly important trait in hunter-gatherer societies, ensuring their egalitarian social system. When a successful hunter comes home with a big prey, he typically downplays the importance of the catch, a practice referred to as “insulting the meat”. A hunter praising himself or showing off would be punished with laughter and in the worst-case ostracism. A hunter has more to lose from being ostracised than a successful farmer or herder. I assume therefore that hunter-gatherers are more sensitive to criticism and therefore also more prone to self-doubt when their perception is so different from the majority.
What this doesn’t mean, is that hunter-gatherer personality types can’t overestimate themselves. They might easily do so, when narcissistic, for example. However, hunter-gatherer types would typically feel uneasy when they suddenly feel that they are somehow “above” the others as they are programmed to be more egalitarian and therefore also more humble.
Comments
Post a Comment